The author of the Fourth Gospel  calls in question the notion of g-d as a master, the only New Testament author to face up to this issue. The author is not an abstract critical thinker but rather thinks in narrative. Therefore, the argument must be ferreted out.

Master/Slave

The Fourth Gospel employs the standard Greco-Roman master/slave model. The author of the Fourth Gospel knows the common proverb about masters and slaves: “slaves are never better than their masters” (13:16). In the story about the healing of the government official’s son (4:47–54), the official addresses Jesus with the honorific kurie, master or sir. Since this official clearly outranks Jesus, he employs the honorific because he is asking a favor of Jesus and so will be dependent on him. In a shame/honor society, his request abases him to Jesus. Jesus grants his request and while returning home, his slaves report that his son lives. This story is clearly embedded in a master/slave society.

Master g-d

While the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) refer to both g-d and Jesus as kurios/master/lord, the Fourth Gospel does not refer to God as kurios/master/lord. There is one possible but instructive exception in John 12:13. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds proclaim, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! <Blessed is> the King of Israel!” In Psalm 118:26, the reference is to the g-d of Israel, but here it is applied to Jesus. So, what had been a reference to g-d now refers to Jesus.

In the Fourth Gospel, g-d is never referred to as the master or lord (kurios). This is surely no accident.

Sir

The most common address to Jesus is the vocative kurie, an honorific frequently translated as “sir.” Master (kurios) and son (huios) are the most prominent titles for Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, both used about fifty times. “Anointed” (christos) only occurs nineteen times. Kurie is used thirty-two times as an address to Jesus, while “son” is Jesus’ self-reference. Jesus never explicitly refers to himself as master, although normally addressed as master/sir. The father/son model is invoked much more in the Fourth Gospel than the master/slave model and is the model for explaining Jesus’ relation to g-d. g-d is his father, not his master. Not calling g-d master and the absence of the master/slave model in regard to the relationship between Jesus and g-d is significant.

The most frequent title for g-d in the Fourth Gospel is “father,” one hundred and forty times. Jesus refers to himself as son fifty-five-times. The father/son model determines g-d’s relation to Jesus, not the master/slave model. The author of the Fourth Gospel is clearly trying to shift the understanding of g-d from master to father. But that is not so easy to do. The father of a household is a master, and those in his household were his slaves, whether actually or metaphorically.

Agency

The author attempts to subvert or wire around the conclusion that g-d the Father is a master by redefining the relation between the father and son. In conflict with the Judeans, Jesus claims, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). He elaborates on this. ”If I don’t do my Father’s works, don’t believe me; if I do, even if you can’t believe in me, believe in the works, so that you’ll fully understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (10:37–38). The “works” manifest the Father’s will, the carrying out of which is the Son’s task. These statements about the relation of the Father and Son are not ontological (how they are related in their essence) statements, as the theological and dogmatic tradition has read them, but claims of agency. The Son is the Father’s agent, stands for and represents the Father. John Ashton (Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 312–317) explains: “In fact the king is greater than his emissary; in law the emissary is the king’s equal” (316). The Gospel of John employs agency to explain the relation between the Father and Son. The Father is greater (14:28), but the Father and Son are one (10:30). The agency model is clear in that the Son participates in the Father’s honor. “So that everyone will respect the son, just as they respect the Father. Whoever does not respect the Son does not respect the Father who sent him” (5:23; see also 13:20).

In the Fourth Gospel, agency defines the relation between the Father and the Son, but love binds them together. At the conclusion of the Nicodemus dialogue, Jesus says, “The Father loves the son and has entrusted everything to him” (3:35). “Entrusted everything to him” is agency, but agency does not result from power but love. In the standard agency model, the agent represents the power of the principal, that is, the king. Here the agent represents the Father’s love. Love is the argument against g-d as a slave master. The Father is a lover. And his Son is the agent of that love.

Believer as Slave

The Fourth Gospel also reaches the same conclusion as Paul the Envoy (Apostle) does concerning the status of believers: the category of slave is inappropriate for the followers of Jesus. Also, like Paul, the author notes that sin is slavery.

Let me tell you this:

everyone who commits sin is a slave.

No slave is ever a permanent member of the family; but a son is.

So, if the son liberates you, you’ll really be free” (8:34–36). 

This lays out the logic in an almost syllogism. Sin defines the slave, one who has no control but is controlled by sin. The family is the family of g-d. A slave is not a permanent member but subject to the master who can sell the slave off. But a son is a permanent member of the family and the heir. If the son sets you free, you are free.

If a permanent member of the family, what is the believer’s status?

Friends

Jesus in his last address (chapters 13–17), what Ernest Käsemann titled The Testament of Jesus,[1] lays out the believer’s status in a simple but well-constructed period. It faces the issue of slavery head on.[2]

Below is a sound map of John 15:12–17. This is what the Greeks call a “period,” which is a sound-unit. In English a period marks the end of a sentence. The English sentence is a grammatical unit. The Greek period is a sound unit. We read; they hear. Greek has no notion of a sentence as a grammatical unit.[3] The Greeks view a period (peri [around] hodos [path]) as a circuit. A period is made up of cola, short phrases that guide voice and ear, in a way similar to verse in poetry.

This is a simple but carefully constructed period. The initial cola (verse 12) is repeated in the last cola (verse 17): Love one another. This is the theme of the cola. The period is made up of eight cola, which I mark out below. The cola are all doublets except the seventh, which is elongated. This signals the period’s conclusion and it is also the commissioning cola.

1 ¹²This is my commandment to you:

you shall love each other just as I loved you.

2 ¹³There is no greater love

than to give up your life for your friends.

3 ¹⁴You are my friends

when you do what I command you.

4 ¹⁵I no longer call you slaves,

since a slave does not know what his master is up to.

5 I have called you friends,

because I let you know everything I learned from my Father.

6 ¹⁶You didn’t choose me;

I chose you.

7 And I selected you

to go out

and produce fruit.

And your fruit will last

because my Father will provide you with whatever you request using my name.

8 ¹⁷This is what I command you:

you shall love each other.

The example of love is “to give up your life for your friends.” Jesus will give up his life and in the Nicodemus dialogue Jesus had explained, “This is how God loved the world: God gave up an only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not be lost but have unending life” (3:16). Both Father and Son give up life for the life of others. The Nicodemus saying refers to “everyone,” while this period in cola 2 employs “friends,” which is the pivotal new term.

Love (agape) and friend (philos) are semantically related. They both mean “love,” but their range of meaning differs. Love is the basis of friendship in the Greek understanding.

Friendship is the solution to the problem of slavery. In cola 4, Jesus says, “I no longer call you slaves, since a slave does not know what his master is up to.” At no point in the narrative had Jesus called his followers slaves, but that is not the point. Because they now know everything he learned from the Father, love one another, Jesus and the hearers are friends, equals. The gap between them has been eliminated. On that basis Jesus commissions the hearers “to go out and produce fruit”; that is as the final cola says, “You shall love one another.” His mission from the Father becomes their mission.

The great cataloger Aristotle in books eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics had analyzed friendship. For him, “The perfect form of friendship is that between the good, and those who resemble each other in virtue” (8.6). This demanded “equality, for both parties render the same benefit and wish the same good to each other” (8.7).

Aristotle and the author of the Fourth Gospel agree. But in one regard the Fourth Gospel goes further than Aristotle. When the Son calls the hearers friends, he brings them into the Father and Son’s love. This friendship is based on love, not power and not fear. This plays directly to the absence of g-d as master in the Fourth Gospel. A master operates out of fear. Fear of g-d is a major theme in the Hebrew Bible, but absent in the Fourth Gospel. The Father’s commandment is love one another; the example is to give up one’s life for another.

Conclusion

The Fourth Gospel has succeeded where Paul failed. While both understand that the freedom of the believer is incompatible with the metaphor of the slave, Paul is ambivalent and inconsistent in his usage. The Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, dissolves the slavery model with the friendship model. Paul in no way challenged g-d as a slave master. With g-d as a lover and friend, the Fourth Gospel revamped g-d as master/lord into g-d as father and redefined the father as based on love, not power or fear. This is a major revision of the Hebrew view of g-d. It had the effect of tying the Father, Son, and believers into a unity based on love. But this unity is one of agency, not ontology. Love as agency is action and mission, not being.

Love, friendship, and equality as agency play out in deeds. There are no apostles in the Fourth Gospel, only students. The community has no hierarchy. The beloved student (disciple) is not superior to other students. In Jesus’ postmortem dialogue with Mary Madgalene, he treats her as an equal. He commissions her, “go to my brothers and tell them this: ‘I’m ascending to my Father and your Father—to my God and your God” (20:17). He calls them brothers, not students. “My Father and your Father, my God and your God” puts Mary Magadalene (and the students) and Jesus on the same level, the basis of true friendship. The text recognizes that Jesus has commissioned her when the narrator in verse 18 notes “she announced” (aggellousa) to the students the news of the resurrection. Aggelō means “to bear a message, to bring news, to announce.” It is a strong word. Aggelos, angel, or messenger is a cognate. In Lucan terms, this makes her the apostle to apostles.[4] The Fourth Gospel without apostles or hierarchy, has her as one of many commissioned by Jesus as Jesus was commissioned by the Father.

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[1] Käsemann, Ernst. The Testament of Jesus : A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of Chapter 17. Trans Gerhard Krodel. Fortress Press, 1968.

[3] For details on this process see Margaret Ellen Lee and Bernard Brandon Scott. Sound Mapping the New Testament.

[4] Brock, Ann Graham. Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority.

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